Chapter 18: Christmas
Silas woke before dawn to the smell of batter in a hot pan.
He lay still a moment, listening to the kitchen below: a spatula scraping, the soft clink of a plate, a boy's voice muttering to himself. Christmas morning, Jones Street, and for the first time in twelve years the house held two breathing souls.
"Tommy?" he called, pulling on his robe.
"In the kitchen! Don't come down yet, I'm not ready!"
Silas sat on the edge of the bed and smiled at the floor.
"You better not be burning my kitchen down," he called.
"I am NOT. Sit tight. I watched three whole videos."
He waited a respectful four minutes, then padded downstairs in his slippers. The kitchen was warm and fragrant. On the table sat a stack of pancakes, slightly lopsided, one of them shaped like a sad turtle.
Silas walked over and looked down at the stack. "Well. Look at that."
"I know the first one is garbage. The first one is always garbage. The video lady said that's normal."
"Which video lady?"
"The one with the gray hair. She has eleven grandkids. Nobody taught her either. She learned from television and she is doing great."
Silas felt something loosen in his chest. "Nobody taught you," he repeated softly.
"Nope. Mom taught me, like, nothing in the kitchen, because." Tommy shrugged. "Dale mostly did sandwiches. Uncle Frank did takeout. So. YouTube." He put a pancake on a plate with great ceremony. "Sit. Eat. Judge."
Silas sat. He cut a bite, chewed, nodded with exaggerated gravity. "Crispy edges. Fluffy middle."
"I KNOW. That's the good part."
"Tommy," Silas said. "These are excellent pancakes."
The boy ducked his head, pleased, and sat across the table with his own plate. They ate in companionable quiet for a while, the winter sun coming pale through the kitchen windows. Outside, Jones Street was empty and hushed, a rare frost on the window glass.
"I made syrup hot," Tommy said. "The gray-haired lady said hot syrup is elite."
"She sounds like the queen of breakfast."
"No rule. Let's do presents after this."
Tommy nodded and attacked his pancakes with new urgency.
The living room tree was small, a fir they'd picked together from the lot on Waters Avenue, strung with the old Crane ornaments Silas had hauled from the attic: June's painted glass balls, Maggie's paper-chain garland from third grade. Beneath it sat two wrapped boxes.
Silas handed Tommy the larger one. "Open mine first."
Tommy tore the paper off with both hands. Inside the velvet box lay a gold band, plain and heavy, the same width as the one around his neck.
"Whoa," Tommy breathed. "Is this. Is this real?"
"Abramowitz," Silas said. "Same jeweler who made your mother's ring. I brought him the framed sketch you keep in your room, and he made this to match it."
Tommy turned the ring slowly. Inside the band, tiny engraved letters caught the light. He squinted at them.
"Read it," Silas said quietly.
Tommy's lips moved. "T.R. Fly high. Love, Grandpa."
Silence filled the room like water.
"Grandpa," Silas said, and his voice was rough. "That's what it says. So it's official. You can hold me to it."
Tommy stared at the ring. His throat worked. He blinked hard, and a tear dropped onto the velvet box and darkened it.
"Hey," Silas said gently. "No, come on."
"I'm not crying," Tommy said, crying. "Shut up."
Silas laughed, a short wet sound of his own. "You're wearing it around your neck like your mother did, that's the deal. Shoestring. It's tradition now."
Tommy lifted the shoestring from under his collar, where his mother's ring hung beside Dale's brass compass. Then, carefully, he threaded the new ring onto it too, so that both rings hung there together.
"There," he said. "Now they are a pair."
Silas put his hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezed.
"My turn," Tommy said, wiping his face with his sleeve. He picked up the second box, the smaller one, and pushed it across the coffee table. "It's not as good as yours. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize for a present before I open it."
Silas unwrapped it. Inside the box, nestled in tissue, lay Dale's brass compass, the one Frank had pressed into Tommy's hand in the holding cell. It was dented and scratched, its lid loose on the hinge, the needle still trembling faithfully toward north.
Silas went very still.
"Dad would want you to have it," Tommy said. "He carried it on the docks. He said a compass doesn't care where you've been, it only cares where you're going. I think." Tommy shrugged. "He said stuff like that when he was tired."
Silas picked up the compass. He turned it over in his hands, opened the lid, watched the needle settle. He held it a long time.
"Tommy," he said finally.
"I know. It's old. And it's dented."
"It's perfect." Silas looked at him. "You sure about this?"
Tommy nodded. "It's yours now. For Christmas."
Silas closed his fingers around the compass. "Then I'll keep it on the mantel," he said. "Where I can see it."
He stood, walked to the fireplace, and set the compass on the mantel beside the framed Abramowitz sketch. Behind him, Tommy stood up too.
Silas held out his hand. Tommy lifted the shoestring from his collar, the two gold bands hanging there together: his mother's ring, and the new one Silas had given him that morning. Tommy slipped the new band off the shoestring and set it on the mantel. Then, carefully, he laid the shoestring down beside it, so that Maggie's ring rested next to his own.
The two rings, side by side on the mantel.
"There," Tommy said softly. "Now she has company."
Silas put his hand on the boy's shoulder. They stood there together, the old man and the boy, watching the morning light move across the gold, and neither of them said anything more, because nothing more was needed.